Reddit Removes Bitcoin Payment Option, Censors Darknet Forum

Despite all the Telegram groups, Discord channels and many other alternatives, Reddit remains a leading forum for the wider bitcoin community – especially for new users to learn about the concept for the first time. As such, the website holds power over the conversation and what happens on Reddit can have much wider repercussions.

No More Reddit Gold for Bitcoin

San Francisco headquartered link sharing and content rating website Reddit has removed the option to gift users with reddit gold using bitcoin. Despite sounding like an ICO token, reddit gold is the website’s premium membership program which gives users some special benefits and features and helps the cash-strapped company keep the servers running.

After the issue was highlighted by /r/btc moderator Bitcoinxio, we learned that it was caused due to the recent change with Coinbase Commerce, according to a moderator of number of forums on the website. User emoney04 explained: “The upcoming Coinbase change, combined with some bugs around the Bitcoin payment option that were affecting purchases for certain users, led us to remove Bitcoin as a payment option. We’re going to take a look at demand and watch the progression of Coinbase Commerce before making a decision on whether to re-enable.” Asked about the option to enable BCH payments due to their lower fees making it more economical for micro payments, the moderator answered: “Yeah that’s definitely a fair point! We’re going to keep that in mind as we move forward.”

Reddit gold screenshot, no bitcoin option

No More Darknet Markets

In addition to removing the above mentioned payment option, the website has also removed one of the forums where some bitcoin users followed developments about spending cryptocurrency with utmost privacy. The subreddit r/Darknetmarkets, which followed anonymous commerce venues, has now been banned. The forum was censored as part of a broader crackdown on sensitive-topics subreddits for violating “Reddit’s policy against transactions involving prohibited goods or services.”

As an American company, Reddit is compelled to comply with the ever harshening anti-privacy legal framework in the US. Just this Friday the CLOUD Act was signed into law, empowering police investigators to collect people’s data from websites without due process or even informing them of the action. As that is the case, the company might have acted out of its users’ best interests, and to prevent itself from having to surrender their information to the authorities. The website is also considered to be transitioning to a more advertiser-friendly social network model, and it might have decided to ban darknet markets as a part of that business strategy.

Should the bitcoin community prepare to transition away from Reddit to avoid a possible crackdown in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Reddit.

Do you want to talk about bitcoin in a comfortable (and censorship-free) environment? Check out theBitcoin.com Forums — all the big players in Bitcoin have posted there, and we welcome all opinions.